


Breathing in your dust

by aryastark_valarmorghulis



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Niccolò Fares, Skam Season 4, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24668671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis/pseuds/aryastark_valarmorghulis
Summary: Niccolò and Martino talk after Silvia's party.
Relationships: Niccolò Fares/Martino Rametta
Comments: 16
Kudos: 74





	Breathing in your dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DirewolfSummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirewolfSummer/gifts).



> Many thanks to the amazing [maraudorable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentthunder/pseuds/maraudorable) for being the most wonderful Beta and to [DirewolfSummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirewolfSummer) for the prompt (even if I took the liberty of making some changes).  
> I'm not really in the Skam Italia fandom, so I have no clue which characterizations, tropes and themes are fashionable - I simply wrote Niccolò and Martino how I see them.

Via della Lungara is almost asleep, bathed in the soft yellow glow spilling from the lamp posts, a few neon signs passing them by lazily and painting Martino’s face in blue and pink. The Galleria Nazionale is solemn and familiar when they speed by – they’ve been down this street countless times, but Nico’s fingers drum on the steering wheel, barely holding down the excitement of being with Marti again. He feels like his body might burst at the seams with joy, but Marti has been subdued with him after they were released from Silvia’s room.

The drive from Silvia’s house has been silent – not oddly silent, though. At least Nico doesn’t think so, but he wants to hear that they’re alright again from Martino’s lips, and not with a searing kiss and a frenzied quickie this time – not that it wasn’t hot and cathartic and somehow inevitable – but with a smile and with the assurance that they’re Marti and Nico again. Not two exes who hooked up.

So he keeps sneaking glances at him, looking away from the almost deserted street every few seconds in the most unsubtle way to get his attention – it takes less than a minute for Marti’s mouth to curl upwards.

“What? And look at the street!” Martino is shaking his head in mock disapproval but he is smiling, too, so Nico can’t help but smile back.

“Just wanted to make sure you’re aware that Luchino fucked on that bed,” Nico replies.

Marti leans back on the headrest and does his groan-laugh, the one where he pretends to be annoyed but is smiling too much to put some effort into it. “And you _had to_ remind me,” he deadpans.

Nico laughs. “Well, I didn’t want to be the only one plagued by that thought!”

They share a smile and then silence falls once again – and it feels as comfortable as silence has ever felt between them, a cozy blanket that wraps them both in the comfort of knowing each other for more than a year and loving each other for almost as long.

And yet there’s a dissonant note playing in the narrow space between them, an odd aftertaste that Nico can’t quite pinpoint. It could be that three hours ago Martino wasn’t even talking to him and then they had angry sex and apparently got back together without discussing anything. It could be that in a dark corner of Nico’s mind, he can still hear like white noise the instinct to apologise for more than not telling the truth right away – to apologise for being like he is, to apologise because none of what happened would have happened if it wasn’t for him.

Luai, Marti, Rami, his old friends fighting his new ones, the half-truths that turned into lies in Marti’s eyes.

It could be that it still hurts that Martino never said he was sorry for hitting Luai.

Of course if could simply be that Nico tends to ruin good things – things like getting back together with Marti.

He was calling him and texting him and texting Giovanni and the others for ten days, and now that it finally happened – and Marti initiated everything, kissing him under the bed as soon as Nico tried to talk – doubt undermines the pleasure.

He parks the car close to the building where his apartment is – it’s late in the night and there are many free spots. They try to be as silent as they can when Nico opens the old, creaky front door and they climb the stairs; Martino usually complains about the ancient freight elevator that nobody who lives in the building takes, but this time he only huffs a bit when they reach the fourth floor and Nico fumbles with his keys.

He hasn’t been in the apartment much in the last ten days, mostly sleeping at his parents’ at night and spending the days in the university’s library to avoid their questions. They were sad to hear about the breakup but not surprised, their grown-up condescension towards young love translating into an annoying lack of surprise. The darkest part of Nico’s brain suggested that their lack of surprise had less to do with young love predictably coming to an end and more with the belief that no one, not even someone as kind and understanding as Martino, could handle Nico for too long. (After a therapy session, he admitted this assumption said more about him than about his parents.)

“I’m thirsty,” Marti announces, and he goes straight to the refrigerator.

Nico knows fully well it’s almost empty except for water, beer and a couple of yoghurts he’s pretty sure have expired, and he can hear the question even before Marti asks, can see it in the quirk of his eyebrows and in the twist of his mouth when he grabs a bottle of water.

“I’ve been staying with my parents,” Nico explains.

Marti drinks his glass of water and goes to the sink to rinse it. “Really?”

A pinprick of annoyance disturbs the delight of having Marti in the house again, so Nico resorts to his oldest, most trusted weapon to approach difficult topics: humour. “For someone who wasn’t even talking to me three hours ago, you seem awfully worried about me… I must have been mind-blowing on Silvia’s bed.”

Marti chuckles and he seems to blush a little under the cold kitchen lights, but his smile turns wistful, his fingers tracing the marble counter. “I was an ass to ignore you all night,” he says, eyes still studying the overturned glass left to dry in the sink. “But I was still pissed that I had to learn the truth from Sana and not from you.” Marti says it bluntly, calmly, but not unkindly – after all, he’s had a few days to think about it.

Nico sighs. “I’m sorry.”

There’s not much else he _can_ say, but there’s a lot he would like to say: that punching Luai was wrong, that Marti not trusting him _hurt_ , that Luai telling him none of it was his fault didn’t magically make it true. “I didn’t know how to tell you, and after the fight...” He shrugs, trails off. Words get lost in the impossibility of explaining the past coming back and slamming into the present.

But Marti helps him find the thread, like he usually does. “Yeah. Not my finest moment,” he admits. Nico can see him swallowing thickly. “I’m sorry. I got carried away. I was wrong to start all that shit.” It sounds rehearsed and strained and Marti’s mouth twists like he just tasted something sour, but Nico knows he’s sincere, that he means what he said. He remembers the morning they broke up, and the words Marti threw at him, full of bitterness and insecurity and self-doubt and jealousy. _So you didn’t learn the Qu’ran for him? You weren’t texting him? How many other times did you lie? Were you thinking about him last night? Did you meet up?_

He appreciates what Marti is saying, knowing how much it cost to mean it.

“So am I forgiven?” Nico smiles cheekily, because he knows he is. He also knows the real question would be _do you trust me?_ , but the mended thread between them still seems too delicate to be put under strain. The root of the problem is his “complicated relationship with the truth”, like Giovanni said in an honest – maybe too honest – text.

“Yes.” Marti smiles and comes to him, brings his hands up, warm and familiar, to caress Nico’s face, his eyes sparkling with affection – such a stark contrast from the heated, rough sex from before. “Am I?”

Nico smiles and kisses him, losing himself into that sweet embrace he missed so much. Every thought that it’s not really up to him to forgive Marti is wiped away when he’s pushed towards the bedroom, kiss after kiss, and when his knees hit the bed, he lets himself fall and Marti climbs on top of him.

It’s better than on Silvia’s bed, when it seemed they were fucking their hurt feelings away – Nico can stop thinking and the world doesn’t spin on Marti’s absence anymore, but on his body and mouth and hands and sighs and groans.

Later, he rests his chin on Marti’s chest, who still looks at him with that soft but almost smug grin, like Nico is this big prize he gets to keep, still pets his hair with soothing fingers. Nico closes his eyes, sated and happy and sleepy.

“I think...” Marti starts, his voice barely a whisper in the dark stillness of night, his fingers still playing with Nico’s curls. “I think I was… so jealous because, because you had all these… _experiences_ before me, I mean, all these people you… ”

Nico doesn’t open his eyes but his body tenses in Marti’s arms, and he can hear him rumbling, a low, deep vibration from the depth of his chest.

“I was upset that you loved others before me, while I… I was a dumbass who was talking bullshit from morning to night and nothing else.”

At that, Nico raises his head and opens his eyes, meeting Marti’s self-conscious gaze. He presses a kiss to his collarbone and mumbles words – comforting, he hopes – against his freckled skin. “You were never dumb,” he says. He kisses Marti’s neck, his cheek, his nose, his eyelids, his mouth. “I don’t remember you talking bullshit to me, and… I never felt with others what I feel for you.”

He doesn’t say he never loved Maddalena or Luai: he did, in his own way. He doesn’t say that loving them didn’t do any good – in fact, they both ended up hurt because Nico loved them. He doesn’t say that he never even had the time to love Luai, because he’s not stupid enough to mention Luai while he’s in bed with Marti. He doesn’t say that the thought of hurting Marti again is still there, at the back of his mind.

“Yes, I believe you, I think,” Marti says, his soothing fingers still caressing Nico’s hair. “I was sulking all the time without you – Gio, Fili, Sana and the boys couldn’t stand me anymore, must be why they locked us in so we could talk and make up.”

Nico suppresses a laugh. “I don’t remember you talking much.”

Marti tugs playfully at his hair. “Oh, shut up!” he chuckles. “You were staring at me like this –” He widens his eyes comically and bats his eyelashes in the most ridiculous – and unfaithful – imitation of Nico.

“I’m pretty sure that was you,” Nico teases him.

“Shut up,” Marti repeats, and pulls him in for a kiss. Nico shuts up and melts into him, his restless mind not swirling when he focuses on Marti and the love that sparkles between them. They’ll be alright, he thinks.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://aryastark-valarmorghulis.tumblr.com/)!


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